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Yearly Archives: 2017

Americans Renunciating Citizenship is Heading for Record Year!

November 15, 2017

Now nearly 1,400 Americans renounced their citizenship in the third quarter of 2017, according to US Treasury Department data. The trend suggests the total for 2017 will be more than 6,800: 26 per cent above the 2016 total and 56 per cent higher than 2015.  

Americans are on pace to renounce their citizenship in record numbers in 2017, according to the latest quarterly report from the Treasury Department. 
 

  • Some 5,411 U.S. citizens expatriated in 2016, a record high that topped 2015's numbers by 26 percent. 
  • 2017 is currently on track to beat those figures, Bloomberg News reported, estimating a total of 6,813 by the end of the year if the fourth quarter is similar to 2016's.

  • 2011 was the first year in which more than 1,000 people chose to terminate their American citizenship, according to the Federal Register. 

Under federal law, Americans are taxed according to their nationality, which causes U.S. citizens living outside the country to face taxation from both the U.S. and their nation of residence. The pace of Americans jumping ship started to accelerate in 2010, when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) became law. The act was intended to stem tax evasion of U.S. citizens living or working abroad by basically requiring foreign institutions holding assets for American expats to report those accounts or withhold a 30 percent tax on them.

 
2016 q4 annualThe graph to the left is based solely on IRS data and shows the number of published expatriates per year since 1998.
 
The connection between the list of expatriates and the IRS implies a link to tax policy.
 
The U.S. is one of a very small number of countries that tax based on nationality, not residency, leaving Americans living abroad to face double taxation.
 
The escalation of offshore penalties over the last 20 years is likely contributing to the increased incidence of expatriation.
 
 
 
 Should I Stay or Should I Go?
 
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gpZUZK6-jMY/UgVUIPb77LI/AAAAAAAACHk/jJDlvL_8SSk/s400/Tax+Problems.jpg

 
 
Need Advise on Expatriation ... 

 
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KyLqQN2UM7k/U-UWwgfXK_I/AAAAAAAADgo/iukRiYWCndc/s200/Expatriation.jpg 
 
 
 
Contact the Tax Lawyers of

Marini & Associates, P.A.

 
for a FREE Tax Consultation

Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid ((888) 882-9243)


Sources:

Bloomberg
The Hill

 
STEP International News 1 Sept 2014: Citizenship renunciation fee soars as American expats flee FATCA

Read more at: Tax Times blog

Sen. Bernie Sanders Call For Senate Investigation of the Offshore Paradise Papers Leak

November 15, 2017

We had previously posted on October 30, 2017 Another Offshore Law Firm Gets Hacked! where we discussed that Appleby, an Offshore Law Firm/Corporate Agent's Recent Data Breach is yet Another Example of How the IRS Can Discover your Unreported Foreign Account and how the Super-rich clients of offshore law firm Appleby are bracing themselves for the exposure of their financial secrets, after the firm admitted data had been stolen in a cyber attack last year. Today we posted More Then 31,000 US Taxpayers Exposed in Paradise Papers! which discusses that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has issued the Paradise Papers which is a global investigation into Appleby's the files and which reveals information regarding more then 31,000 US Taxpayer' s offshore structures!

Now Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called for the U.S. Senate to investigate offshore tax evasion following the revelations of the Paradise Papers, adding to the growing voices in Congress who have called for government to take action to address the investigation’s findings.

In a letter to Senate Budget Committee chair Mike Enzi (R-WY), Sanders called on the budget committee to launch a bipartisan investigation to determine how much the use of offshore havens has contributed to the U.S. national debt.

“The Paradise Papers reveal how corporations, billionaires and senior officials in the Trump Administration use complicated financial maneuvers to hide their income from the Internal Revenue Services,” Sanders wrote. “The Budget Committee has a responsibility to U.S. taxpayers to get to the bottom of this serious issue.”

Sanders joins Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and several other members of Congress who have called for further examination of Paradise Papers revelations and their implications for a tax bill recently proposed by Republicans that would significantly reduce corporate taxes.

“These documents pull back the curtain on a complex shell game, where corporations’ staggering profits disappear offshore and rematerialize when the time is right and the tax liability is the lowest,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), as they called on Congress to reexamine the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act
they introduced in April.

“Middle-class American families can’t set up their own Grand Cayman subsidiaries.  Instead, they’re left paying a bigger share of taxes than they should.”

 Marini & Associates, PA has assisted several hundred clients with coming into U.S. tax compliance and avoiding the draconian penalties that the IRS may impose on U.S. persons with undisclosed foreign accounts.

Do You Have Undeclared Foreign Income?
 
 
   Want to Know if Which OVDP Program is Right for You?
 


 
Contact the Tax Lawyers at 
Marini & Associates, P.A.  
 
 

for a FREE Tax Consultation
at: www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com or
Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

Source

ICIJ

Read more at: Tax Times blog

More Then 31,000 US Taxpayers Exposed in Paradise Papers!

November 15, 2017

We had posted on October 30, 2017 Another Offshore Law Firm Gets Hacked! where we discussed that Appleby, an Offshore Law Firm/Corporate Agent's Recent Data Breach is yet Another Example of How the IRS Can Discover your Unreported Foreign Account and how the Super-rich clients of offshore law firm Appleby are bracing themselves for the exposure of their financial secrets, after the firm admitted data had been stolen in a cyber attack last year.

Now the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has issued the Paradise Papers which is a global investigation into Appleby's the files.
 

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 95 media partners explored 13.4 million of these leaked files which were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The Paradise Papers include Nearly 7 Million:
  •  Loan Agreements,
  • Financial Statements,
  • EMails,
  • Trust Deeds and
  • Other Paperwork 

which represents nearly 50 years of records at Appleby, a leading offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond. The documents also include files from a smaller, family-owned trust company, Asiaciti, and from company registries in 19 secrecy jurisdictions.
 

The records range from complex, 100-page corporate transaction sheets and dollar-by-dollar payment ledgers to simple corporate registries of countries, such as Antigua & Barbuda, that do not publicly list names of company shareholders or directors.
As a whole, the Paradise Papers files expose offshore holdings of political leaders and their financiers as well as household-name companies that slash taxes through transactions conducted in secret. Financial deals of billionaires and celebrities are also revealed in the documents.
The Paradise Papers Files Include Far More Information About U.S. Taxpayers, At least 31,000 of Them,
Than Previous ICIJ Investigations!
ICIJ collaborated with more than 380 journalists working on six continents in 30 languages. Many team members spent a year using online platforms to communicate and to share documents.
 
Journalists tracked down court records, obtained financial disclosures of politicians in Africa, Europe, and Latin and North America, filed freedom of information requests and conducted hundreds of interviews with tax experts, policymakers and industry insiders.   

 
Marini & Associates, PA has assisted several hundred clients with coming into U.S. tax compliance and avoiding the draconian penalties that the IRS may impose on U.S. persons with undisclosed foreign accounts.

Do You Have Undeclared Foreign Income?
 
  

 Want to Know if Which OVDP Program is Right for You?


 
Contact the Tax Lawyers at 
Marini & Associates, P.A.  
 
 

for a FREE Tax Consultation
at: www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com or
Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

Read more at: Tax Times blog

OECD Report Finds That Tax Haven Islands Are Now Sharing Information

November 9, 2017

According to Law360, The Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Mauritius, three of the world’s most famous tax havens, are among the countries deemed “compliant” or “largely compliant” with international standards for tax information exchange, according to a series of reports released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The island nations, which all pledged in the early 2000s to implement OECD’s standards, were part of a group of 10 countries whose compliance was reviewed by the group's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

Mauritius shares the “compliant” badge with Ireland and Norway, while “largely compliant” Bermuda and the Cayman Islands find themselves in a group with Australia, Canada, Germany and Qatar. The Global Forum deemed Jamaica “partially compliant” with the standards and launched a “supplementary report” to boost its compliance rating.

The reports released 08/21/17 were the first results of what the OECD body calls a “new and enhanced peer review process” that began in mid-2016. According to the Global Forum, this second round of reviews has focused on the availability of information about beneficial ownership of certain assets, as required by the Financial Action Task Force international standard.

In its peer review of Bermuda, the Global Forum said that the Caribbean country is still working on implementing recommendations that it made during a 2013 review of its compliance with information exchange and transparency standards, including increasing legal requirements for maintaining ownership, identity and accounting information. Monday’s report for the country doubled down on those recommendations, while asking it to strengthen its compliance with beneficial ownership information standards.

In its review of the Cayman Islands, the Global Forum gave credit to the country for making progress on recommendations that the OECD body made in 2013 during the first round of peer reviews, though it also made a similar recommendation to the country regarding the maintenance of beneficial ownership information.

The Global Forum released a similarly optimistic report earlier this summer in which it found that every country surveyed but one — Trinidad and Tobago — had taken steps to make their tax agencies better at sharing information with one another about foreign-held assets. The Global Forum said that dozens of countries, ranging from Andorra to Guatemala, had made progress on those standards, taking steps to open up their banking records and retain and share information.

Since 2008, the OECD has worked to establish an international standard for tax authorities to communicate with one another and track down foreign income of their residents. Similar efforts have been made by the G-20, the international forum of industrialized and emerging economies. The 142 member countries of the OECD initiated the Common Reporting Standard in 2014 and aim for nations to begin exchanging tax information this year or the next.

Do You Have Undeclared Offshore Income?
 
 Want to Know if the Streamlined Program is Right for You?

 
Contact the Tax Lawyers at 
Marini& Associates, P.A.  
 
for a FREE Tax Consultation
at: www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

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